Mobile process groups based device/service discovery and interoperability in MANets

Abstract

Advancements in wireless technology, has led to the increased use of wireless handheld mobile devices. The proliferation of a vast number of these devices and the curiosity of the young generation about the information available on the internet anytime anywhere has resulted in a ubiquitous computing scenario. Ubiquitous computing consists of various kinds of computational devices, networks, collaborating software and hardware entities that are required to be interoperable and discoverable in order to communicate with each other. Interoperability is the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged. In a highly dynamic and distributed environment like MANets, the basic issue is the discoverability of devices and services by the other entities in the system. This paper presents a framework that supports the discoverability and interoperability of the devices forming an ad-hoc network for ubiquitous applications. The proposed approach uses the Mobile Process (Agents) Group to allow devices on the network to interact with one another. It uses group communication semantics to discover devices and interoperate with those devices. The approach does not impose any constraints at device development time instead uses only run-time constraints.